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,^ .V- APPEAL FROM A COUNTRYMAN 

TO THE 

v^ UNION MEN OF THE SOUTH. 




Fellow Countrymen, the hand of God is upon us for our sins, 
and for the sins of our race. Whether through venality, or for cruelty 
practised on the inferior race, aboriginal to our fathers, we are now 
threatened because of our differences of financial pplicy and our 
relations to another subordinate race, with political dissolution. 

There are those who a short time ago were physically strong in 
that Union most needed for their protection, who, in the eloquent 
words of Mr. Calhoun : " We have pulled the temple down that 
has been built three-quarters of a century. We must clear the 
rubbish away, and reconstruct another. We are now houseless and 
homeless^ and must secure ourselves from storms." 

This is the work of no Samson, who in his death has extin- 
guished a host, but rather of a community, who are willing to sur- 
vive a great nation, perhaps under the dominion of a foreign despot 
whose El Dorado is peopled with countless naked savages, coveted 
as bondmen, at a price not higher than that of a donkey, to be ob- 
tained alike against the will of civilized mankind and the instinct 
of self-preservation of our race, which have forbidden their further 
importation. 

It is indeed too true, that of late use has been made of sectional 
diversity for political ends, affording sad pretext for this most de- 
structive policy, ,but now, in the moment of their triumph, and of 
the apparent downfall of our nation, the Republicans have repented 
them of the evil, instructed by success, they refuse to be guilty of 
parricide. Will you also learn in time, or does your honor render 
it necessary that you should suffer all things which civil strife may 
inflict upon you, that like the Chinese ruler you may punish these 
Republicans at whose doors the cotton States may be considered to 
have committed suicide? 

Mr. Seward, as Secretary of State to the President elect, has 



^440 

spoken in the Senate; he has given pledges, which, from our per- 
sonal knowledge we assure you, the people of these cities, and of 
the States to which they severally belong, will see fulfilled. 

Remain with them beneath the shadow of our oriflamme, and this 
great empire, bound together by equity, as the universe is bound by 
gravity, shall still firmly stand. To this result, we who sign this 
do solemnly pledge ourselves. God purposes that it should be; 
for the shots fired into the Star of the West killed no man. Thanks 
to His mercy, and the forbearance of the gallant Anderson, who 
lately with prayer, and on his knees, raised our standard, blood 
is not yet required of the wrong doers. 

Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, all had such 
experience of slavery, while the foreign traffic in negroes continued, 
that they left recorded in the hearts of their countrymen a senti- 
ment which, in 1831, had almost resulted in emancipation with 
you. The natural moral consequence of that traffic was the Afri- 
canization of the West India Islands, in 1836. An act, by some 
viewed as a financial necessity, by others as an act of simple 
folly; by wise men charged, perhaps, in some measure, to both. 
However accounted for, its influence upon us was unquestioned. 
It gave rise to that storm of unjust moral accusation which, flowing 
first from fanatics and fools, later in the mouths of politicians has 
given pretext for the recent course of our more southern neighbors. 
But Providence sends no evil upon humanity that, manfully borne, 
will not at last bear good fruit. The abolitionists arousing your 
minds to opposition, saved you from the commission of a great 
wrong, in the emancipation of a race quite as unfit as the Indian 
to maintain an independent existence, in contact with our own. 
And now the declaration by Mr. Seward, of his willingness, by an 
unalterable clause of the Constitution, to prohibit all interference 
with your domestic relations, is a positive admission of an entire 
change of sentiment here and throughout the North. Nor do his 
assurances stop here ; he also abdicates the impracticable political 
position that limits shall be set by man to human increase, as de- 
creed by God. He is willing, in the manner indicated by himself 
in the Committee of Thirteen, to appropriate to your use the terri- 
tory south of the Missouri Compromise line, by making it a slave 
State, whose area gives you a full proportion in the ratio of square 
miles to representation. Let us hope that his objection, and that 
of his party, to Constitutional amendments, in the present excited 



3 

state of the country, may yet be overcome. Indeed we believe 
that the wisdom and experience of Mr. Crittenden will suggest 
amendments to the Constitution that will be adopted, and it is our 
most sacred duty to warn you that in a government that permits 
an appeal to the people for its constitutional amendment, every 
attempt at rebellion without such appeal is in the highest degree 
criminal, and must divorce from those who attempt it the sympathy 
of all good men. How much more will this crime be enhanced 
when you reflect that example is catching, and that you may pre- 
sently be called on to visit with extermination inferiors suspected 
of an inclination to imitate the lawlessness of their masters. 

The incoming administration are not the choice of a majority of 
the American people — that majority is at heart favorable to your 
entire protection. The very vote by which Mr. Lincoln was chosen 
may be considered a practical denial of the Chicago platform, and 
Mr. Seward boldly avows that the Union, and such measures as 
may be necessary to its protection, must have precedence over all 
the obligations of party. 

Do not then destroy your country upon a question which evi- 
dently must be a question of time only. Eeflect that in the past 
history of the world, the banks of that great river through which 
the current of the human race has swept downward into the ocean 
of eternity are scarred by the floodmarks of successive races, each 
in its generation sweeping from those cold regions where necessity 
and its natural accompaniment, monogamy, has produced a hardy 
and numerous population, gradually overflowing more southern 
lands. Maintain your present relations of friendship with your 
race, and so perpetuate an equilibrium for which there is but one 
analogy— the relation of God's mighty universe. Who is there 
amongst you willing to have inscribed upon his tomb, "This man 
survived his country. Born to a name greater than that of a 
prince, he saw the temple of liberty overturned. Princes and the 
ambassadors of unknown people came to do honor to the edifice 
which for nearly a century astonished mankind. The world gazed 
with awe upon its ruins, and even foreign despots incited by traitors 
refused to aid in its destruction." Shall it be noted in history that 
in the same year Italians profited by our former example, in the 
reconstruction of a nation desolated for a thousand years by discord 
and its certain accompaniment, foreign tyranny. Companions of 
our boyhood, friends of our youth, turn back from the fearful 



catastrophe — have courage — forget past injustice. The hearts of a 
mighty people yearn to you — depend upon next year's elections — 
discard abstract distinctions — they ever force men to bloodshed in 
the sinful pride of personal opinion. Ask your brethren of the 
North to do you justice under that common obligation to justice 
which our venerated Constitution creates, and your request will 
not be made in vain. 

In conclusion, read the following words as an official declaration 
from the next administration : — 

" The different forms of labor, if slavery were not perverted to 
purposes of political ambition, need not constitute an element of 
strife in the confederacy. Notwithstanding recent vehement ex- 
pressions and manifestations of intolerance in some quarters, pro- 
duced by intense partisan excitement, we are, in fact, a homogeneous 
people, chiefly of one stock, with accessions well assimilated. We 
have, practically, only one language, one religion, one system of 
government, and manners and customs common to all. Why, then, 
shall we not remain henceforth, as hitherto, one people ?" 



§4 W 



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